


Ghosting

by angelwarm



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Aromantic Niall, Childhood, Childhood Memories, Eating Disorders, Ghosts, Golden Boy Harry, H/L Fireworks Fic Exchange, Homophobic Language, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Song Lyrics, Suicidal Thoughts, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 15:22:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4671602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelwarm/pseuds/angelwarm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“That’s weird,” Harry straightens, childhood tar-thick in his chest. “I would think most people try to forget.”</p><p>“I think people make memories into ghosts,” he fixes his hair, at home in his bones, unaware, like he isn’t casting spells by licking his lips. “I think it’s easier that way, to put the blame somewhere else. But we’re our own ghosts,” Louis looks up at him, a storm gathering in his pupil. “We haunt ourselves.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roguezouis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roguezouis/gifts).



> this is for You!!!!!!! here it is, apologies on the late delivery.
> 
> liam is a blip in the story. things are implied then directly mentioned. there is 1 homophobic slur in a flashback. usage of needles, talk of terminal illness, some description of the effects of disordered behavior & drug use. there will likely be a second & third chapter, but i will post them when i feel like it. i have no schedule. just an outline & a desire to finish it as it should be finished
> 
> hope it... does what it needs to

* * *

 

 _La lune, trop blême, pose un diadème sur tes cheveux roux…_  
_La lune, trop rousse, de gloire éclabousse ton jupon plein de trous…_

*  
*

Morning is a shy creature.

Harry treads light on the dirt path, not yet five-thirty. The last skin of a thunderstorm sheds itself over the woods, coating them in thin dew, and everywhere he looks is lilac.

The daily runs have become daily walks, lately, exhaustion ill-fitting for the exuberance of June. Everyone else seems to be rising up to something, but Harry anticipates only more of the same for himself: an eight-to-four routine, four-to-ten on Saturday’s, lots of glazed donuts and black coffee.

It’s always been that way—poor diet, too much exercise. Most days Harry feels he’s only kept alive by caffeine, the sugar. It fits for the few months where it’s warm and he doesn’t shiver beneath layers of clothing. Summer is bare feet on the drive. Summer begs for nothing else but to be sweet.

When Harry reaches the end of the path, he rubs under his nose, pulls the beanie tighter over his head. Fog wades low to the asphalt of the main road, lingering. Its chill nips at Harry’s ankles as he inhales, heart hurt by the palpitations, and picks up into a run on the way home.

*  
*

Sweat slides, neat, down his neck. Harry unplugs his phone from the wall, opening his messages even though no one would be interested in reaching him. Half the possible callers are dead and the other half might as well be.

There is something syrupy about boyhood, how it sticks to his hands, the smell of it, their milky and impossible bodies floating in the lake. He can feel them on his fingertips, the fine hairs of their arms—Niall’s red swim trunks and infectious happiness, the way Zain took his tea—

Harry sucks the end of his finger into his mouth and tears at the cuticle with his teeth. He isn’t the boy on the bank watching his friends and their laughter fade into the nighttime.

They left that behind. They scraped that love like plaque from their teeth, and this is how it goes, Harry understands—looking away from the car accident so as not to cause another.

He starts the shower and fights the lurch to his stomach at the tinny chlorine scent to it. The pipes are old, the water sometimes tasting like blood when he brushes his teeth.

For the first time in two months, Harry doesn’t drown their memory out with music. He lets the hot spay hit his chest, lets them in where it’s safe—the small white shower in the small apartment, just big enough for his body and all the badness that comes with it.

  
*  
*

Blueberry bakery, about 5 stops on the MTA from Harry’s apartment, is painted baby-blue. It stands solitary in character from the brick-brown office buildings, the soup kitchen, the businesses that stay unassuming.

Across from Blueberry is Holloway’s, a bookshop owned by Ed Holloway, an elusive and thin man Harry has never seen in person. Liam liked to make mythologies out of him before he moved a few states away.

_Ed Holloway walks the cemetery at night, collecting the daffodils, conversing with ghosts—_

Not that Harry’d ever believed him, but whenever a shadow bends itself into some shape Harry convinces himself it’s Holloway. Another thing to thank Liam for, if he ever got a chance to speak to him again.

Harry opens the bakery door, flipping the sign to open and hanging his jean jacket on a coat rack behind the counter. The air conditioning unit rattles, shakes in its effort to work and Harry feels much of the same. He has a shot of espresso. Then another. His teeth soon coated with the dust of it.

Outside the large glass window, Harry watches people walk by on their way to work, some waving to him, a promise to return later for their lunch. He doesn’t know any of them, but they know him, and this is enough.

After placing an apple pie in the oven, Harry picks at his bottom lip, a song crawling up his shoulders, _Used to be one of the rotten ones, and I liked you for that—_

Five minutes later, his eyes refocus. It slithers back down his throat, the trace of cigarette smoke and video games on Saturday’s, and he straightens. Breathing again into a present where the people he loves are dead.

*  
*

He’s been frosting cupcakes, squeezing out blue swirls, for close to fifteen minutes.

It’s the movement of people filtering out from the bus outside that distracts him at first. Too eager for a potential customer. Most of the people look briefly into the bakery, Harry pretending to be diligent. When he glances up, most of them have cleared away. Except for one boy.

In the young sunlight, his eyes are iridescent, lighter than any part of him—the dark brown hair, the golden skin. His mouth, the thin, pink lips, curve at the ends. Angelic, in a darker filter.

Harry stares at him, curious if he’ll come inside.

But the boy takes notice. He sends Harry a lazy half-smile and turns away, crossing the street to the bookshop. Harry watches him go.

The boy floats, graceful and guarded. He unlocks the door to Holloway’s, fitting through the small passage with ease, as though he’d slipped in a million times before. Harry’s never seen him. He’s never seen angels, either, but he knows they exist.

From the window, Harry misses his lithe frame as soon as it slips into the shop’s darkness.

*  
*

A little after nine, Amelia waves a weak hello as she walks through the door, bell ringing through the space. “Hi, Harry,” she rushes out.

Amelia is scraggly, all perm-orange hair and long limbs that clink together while she walks. Her thin face is delicate, inviting, although Amelia herself is closed-off, shriveled. Were Harry still a good boy like he used to be, he might endeavor to find out what made her so small.

“Hey,” Harry murmurs. “How’s everything?”

“Good, good,” she replies, easy. “You?”

“I’m alright.”

“Did you start a new pot of coffee?”

“Yup,” Harry nods to himself, tucking in his chin while he reaches for a to-go bag.

“Make the lemonade?”

“Yes ma’am.”

Amelia huffs, hanging her coat, “D’you really have to use ‘ma’am’ with me?”

Harry freezes, surprised at the reaction. He silently hands the bag filled with one almond-croissant to the girl on her phone, exchanging brief and warm grins of goodbye. He turns to her, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Well,” Amelia nods at him, lost somewhere in her head, “I’m not old. Alright?”

“Okay,” Harry raises his eyebrows at the floor. A beat passes between them.

“I just don’t like being called ma’am,” Amelia explains further. Harry doesn’t pretend to understand, necessarily, but he does move forward to place a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s my mistake. Won’t happen again,” Harry smiles at her, eyes flashing with sympathy he can sense she needs. Then he moves past her to gesture to the large white box full of cupcakes he was frosting earlier that morning. “I finished the pick-up for 9:30,” Harry says, “I’ve gotta start on those muffins, so if a woman with a septum piercing comes in and asks for her order, this is it.”

“Okay,” Amelia nods, “great. I can do that.”

Harry nods, slight, setting out to the back room with ease. This is his favorite part of working in the bakery—the method, the constancy of it. He can rely on the strict bake times, the measurements, they never change. The repetition is an illusion of normalcy Harry welcomes.

While he works on a batch of jam filling, his mind wonders again to the blue-eyed boy that stopped outside the bakery, the faint curl at the ends of his mouth.

*  
*

The lunchtime rush never ceases to startle Harry, the line out the door and the hum of fingertips padding on phone screens, friends chatting, the indie playlist lilting over the space. One second the streets are a makeshift graveyard and the next, bursting with fresh faces.

Harry and Amelia work diligently, used to each other’s bodies, navigating the small space behind the counter as Harry fills coffee cups and Amelia rings up customers. She says over her shoulder, “two blueberry donuts, two small coffees, room for milk.”

“Got it,” Harry replies, twisting his body to reach for two cups and successfully filling and packaging them both in under a minute. He then adds a cheeky, “I’ll really earn my paycheck today,” as he places them both by Amelia.

The two women at the front of the line laugh to themselves, Amelia nonplussed by his charm as per usual.

*  
*

Amelia clocks out, precise and stiff in movement, at exactly four o’clock. She waves silently from the window, the worried crease between her brows still present. Harry tries very hard to care about Amelia, but she’s cold, and sometimes there’s no getting through to the core.

He wipes down the counters again, checks the espresso cups in the machine to make sure there aren’t any cakes left in them, counts the money from the tip jar.

It’s only twenty today, with the addition of forty-six cents, but Harry’s thankful. Tips allow him small pleasures, sugar cubes to sweeten the otherwise acrid taste of ordinary, lower-income life.

With that, he wraps himself in the light jean jacket and flips the sign to “closed,” eyes sweeping over the dark expanse of the bakery out of habit. Satisfied that he’s done all he needs to for tomorrow, Harry adjusts his backpack on his shoulder, and leaves out the front.

After he locks the door behind him, Harry walks down to the soup kitchen at the end of the street, garbage bag in hand and full of baked goods they didn’t sell during the day.

Q, a volunteer around Harry’s age, is on the corner having a cig. He nods hello, exhaling a stream of white smoke, dark eyes flashing. His eyelashes are thick enough to always look like he’s wearing mascara. “Styles. Come ‘round to deliver the goods, eh?”

“Yeah,” Harry confirms.

“Can’t stay tonight? We could use another volunteer,” Q inhales, sharp, tension easing from his shoulders. Harry can almost see the nicotine peppering relief along his neck. “‘Sides, got them twins asking after you.”

“Oh,” Harry rubs the back of his neck. “I could probably stay for a bit, but. Um, I’ve got to open shop again tomorrow—I did today, so. I’m,” Harry shakes his head a little. He can afford a little less sleep, for fuck’s sake. “You know—I’d love to.”

“Great,” Q smiles, “lemme take the bread off yer hands.”

*  
*

There was the Bad Year. Harry was strung out most of the time, homeless in certain terms, mostly sleeping on Zain’s couch and hanging around the same corners. That was when Zain started getting quiet, letting him in past four in the morning after Harry had dragged himself up and down the avenue for something to take the edge off.

He made these large, slow-cooked meals—said he liked having company and was always thinking of having a dinner party, but, it was mostly just so the fridge was always full of something, in case Harry remembered to eat. That was before the beginning of a lot of things—Niall’s diagnosis, a hole torn above the knee in his jeans, a cigarette burn that scarred from scratching the scab off.

But then it got good. Remission and soup kitchens. Harry was bloated all the time, his body getting used to eating again, Zain holding him still until he slept so that the urges might be dampened down.

Anyways, it’s hard to keep food down now. Harry watches teenagers eat at the long wooden tables and laugh over nothing and feels childhood tremble in his throat.

_Needle in the hay, needle in the hay—_

It’s only out of habit that digging his nails into his palm prevents him from standing and walking right back into a life he used to own.

*  
*

Moths flutter around the lamp bulb, erratic, and Harry’s skin itches.

“Thanks for tonight,” Q leads him outside. “I can tell those kids are just better when you’re around.”

“I don’t know about that,” Harry shrugs, biting on a frown.

“I think they just,” the door rattles closed behind them, “like seeing someone who made it out. But, like,” Q licks his lips, “I’m a bit closed off, y’know? Not too expressive. You make them comfortable. I’m like the parent at that place.”

“I guess,” Harry looks away. “I just don’t think I’m good role model material.”

Q spits into the main road. “Bullshit. You’re the golden boy of this town.” He steps closer, cold running close to Harry’s bones. “You make a lot of people happy, you know. Just by being you.”

The sincerity is not lost on Harry, but it’s too far removed from what he thinks he deserves, and every second he stands under Q’s dark scrutiny is a second he contemplates the tequila in his kitchen cabinet. He licks around the inside of his mouth, can already taste it.

“Thanks,” he murmurs, eventually.

Satisfied, Q pulls out a cigarette and offers it to Harry, smile faint, ghostly. “Take it for the walk home. Something to keep your mind busy.”

He gets it. Harry nods, “Thanks.” Q holds his lighter out, the flame licking the end, Harry inhaling. He says as he turns to go, “Stop by the bakery tomorrow morning. I’ll pay you back with a pain au chocolat.”

“Love you,” Q calls, Harry answering with a silent wave, smoke filtering in strong curls from the edge of the cigarette.

*  
*

_“You promised.”_

_The pounding in his head is static compared to the taste of his insides in his mouth, the screaming stiffness to his bones classically offset by withdrawal. Niall always sees him at the worst times. Six hours before this fucking black hole and he would’ve been on the couch eating pizza, apartment completely clean, but that’s how it’s always been. This disease has no remission._

_“You fucking promised,” Niall mutters, lifting Harry up by his armpits and onto the couch. Everything hurts. Everything is blue black._

_“Niall,” Harry mumbles, thick, licking the sweat off his bottom lip, “I have—”_

_“I’ve got it,” Niall dismisses. Harry can hear him rifle through the drawer where he keeps his suboxone prescription. He was three days on it. Three days is the habit-breaking myth, that’s all it takes, just last that long. It’s a hell of a lot of time for an addict. Three days._

_And it rained today. Rain always makes Harry want to sleep for a long time._

_Niall tears the packet, film perched between his two fingers. He’s had to help Harry with this more times than either of them really want to remember. Memories are milk-thin, as it is. They lose months, their illnesses combined._

_“Open your mouth,” Niall instructs. Harry obliges, shuddering in his skin. He could peel it off._

_Gentle, maternal, Niall presses the film to the underside of his tongue. “Stay,” he murmurs. “Don’t move yet.”_  
_Harry watches him, how he carries himself. He’s weaker, paler, everything he expected from the second round of chemo. But still he’s sunny, a summer dandelion among the rest of them._

_It’ll run out, his luck. Harry shuts his eyes and waits for the symptoms to ease, grinding the backs of his teeth down, Niall humming under his breath, slumville sunrise, nobody cares or looks twice…_

_When he opens his eyes again, Niall is looking at him._

_Pink screens through the blinds, strips of it on the floor, Niall’s face. It runs deep, that color, and their affection for each other._

_“How d’you feel?”_

_“Fine,” Harry lies._

_“You’re the only one,” Niall bites at his lip—not too hard—pressing the heel of his palm into his eye. Harry can see now that the dark spot beneath his lashes is wet. “You’re the only one that knows how bad it feels. T’go through this shit.”_

_“Pain,” Harry asks._

_“Yeah,” Niall nods._

_Harry doesn’t say the obvious thing, about the pain, about the fundamental difference between them: choice. They both wake up wanting to rip out their spine._

_In an hour Harry will fix them both some tea, let Niall take his medication, sleep in his bed. Then he’ll slip out and buy a bun, hit up an exchange. He’ll be smarter this time, plan when he’ll use it, space it out over the week._

_He blinks. There is no more light from the outside._

_Niall laughs, “this morning,” fingers pressed into his mouth, “I brushed my teeth so hard my gums bled. I’d eaten some cereal. Talked to Zain. Weather reminded me of where I grew up, and,” he swallows, “I’d almost forgotten.”_

_Again, Harry doesn’t say it—that you’re dying._

_“I stained the front of my shirt,” Niall continues. “They just kept bleeding. I sat against the sink for, I don’t know, maybe an hour. Then it was over. Good as new, fucking joke.”_

_Just then, Harry’s fingers flinch. He thinks of the way blood floods the needle, before the push-in, how the honey mixes with it. Feels divine, maybe._

_Harry glances at Niall, who is crying, alone in the room with him. “I don’t know sometimes if I’ve already,” his breath fractures in his throat, “already fucking gone. I don’t even believe in anything.”_

_“You don’t need to,” Harry urges. “You can be whatever you want. Angel, ghost.”_

_“What if I,” his hands gripping onto his kneecaps, “what if I just want to be dead?”_

_Niall looks at him, swallowing again and again something dark. It doesn’t startle Harry when the thought occurs to him, just a hush, pain is pain and suffering is suffering and no one, not even the best person Harry’s ever known, is above it._

_In the dark, Harry hears him, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”_

*  
*

For miles the main road goes on, covered in parallel lamp posts. Harry sings to himself, alone in the middle of the velvet, _Honey why you callin’ me, so late. It’s kinda hard to talk right now…_

Lights in the shops shut off, the wind gets stuck, and Harry prays for a thunderstorm. He inhales, the cherry flaring at the end of the cigarette.

That’s when he sees him.

Holloway’s door shuts, the keys clacking together like teeth in the quiet. Harry pauses, the boy humming something in his throat. A Christmas song. In June.

It would be less conspicuous to keep walking, but Harry finds his feet heavier than before, wonders what he looks like close up, coated generously in this nighttime. He swallows.

Hands shaking, an odd something caught in his mouth, Harry catches up to him, exhaling a soft, “Hey.”

The boy whirls on his feet and drops his keys, a hand coming up to rest on his chest. His face twists into clear terror, and unable to hide his embarrassment, Harry starts laughing.

Laughter twists his gut, cigarette tucked in his fingers, and the boy sighs, “fuck,” moving with it. The whole town trembles from that laughter, from how their eyes almost audibly lock together once it’s subsided and everything, again, is too quiet.

“Sorry,” Harry breathes. “I’m—so, so sorry. I just…”

He trails off, a vague gesture rolling through his fingers, the boy having now wrapped his arms around his stomach, closing himself off. Harry smiles into his dimples. “I wanted to talk to you, but it looks like I’ve screwed that up.”

“What do you want,” the boy edges, arms slipping down into an open, aggressive stance. Looks like he practices it. He remains unaffected by Harry’s attempt at being charming, and a memory arrives on the heels of this beautiful boy’s eyelids, all the days he got a free meal out of a back alley handjob and a way with words, _slit my throat it’s all I ever—_

—Not now.

Harry recovers, “Just to talk to you.”

“About?”

“Nothing, I guess,” Harry eyes the floor, scanning from the concrete to the boy’s feet. He’s wearing a pair of Brand New vans. Delighted, hope renewed for a minute, Harry looks back up at him. “I like Brand New, too.”

“The devil and god are raging inside me,” the boy recites, casually. “Good band. Saw them two years ago.”

“Me, too,” Harry nods.

“Is that all?”

The night sits dense, bored, between them.

“No,” Harry shrugs. “Thought we might walk home together.”

“I don’t think so,” the boy pockets his keys. He adjusts the hair swept across his forehead, eyelashes fluttering, dismissing Harry completely. “What’s your success rate, anyway?”

At that, Harry grins. “Usually, ten out of ten.”

“Better re-evaluate that, then,” the boy suggests, confidence radiating out from his shoulders, how he carries them when he walks away. But there’s a jump to his gait, and Harry knows that well, the fear of being followed home and had just because they wanted you.

Hooked, Harry allows himself to watch the boy turn the corner, disappearing into the rest of this town’s mystic nothingness. The space is charged where he stood. He must be the kind of person that causes wars.

When he goes to take a drag off the cigarette, it’s dead.

*  
*

_Zain licks the rim of the cup to catch a stray drop of vodka. “They said I could, eh, start in the fall, but. Not too keen on getting there that early, to be honest.”_

_“Why not,” Harry slurs, woozy from oxy’s and alcohol. “‘S your dream.”_

_“That’s in five months,” Zain replies, an answer, Harry can tell from the tone but he doesn’t get it—he sits up, brow furrowed curiously. It’s just sitting wrong inside him, is the thing, there’s a rotting to Zain’s eyes, their gloss._

_Then he gets it._

_“How long does he have,” Harry asks._

_“Six months.”_

_He thinks, slipping into unconsciousness, what an odd thing, to watch someone die._

*  
*

In bed, Harry is still.

There aren’t any curtains to keep the street light out. At first it stormed so often Harry thought leaving the windows bare ensured he’d always catch the lightning—the full whip of it, or the tail-end. Some part of it he’d see, he’d never miss it.

But then the restlessness grew and the hours he slept lessened into four, five. It’s 4:30 in the morning, not yet pink, and he wants chocolate.

He sits up, scrubbing his hands down his face, eyes bleary with water and little stars. His feet hit the floor and he feels better, standing, feeling something underneath him.

Back in the alien days Harry spent a lot of time floating around on beds. _This bed here’s your magic carpet, tie your tourniquet, let it rip._

Harry pokes around the kitchen cabinets, reaching past the vodka to grab at a clump of gold-foiled dove chocolates. Milk. For good measure, he takes a swig of the Grey Goose, lets it shudder inside his throat, up his spine. Just a kick back to sleep.

He leaves the wrappers on the counter.

On the way back to bed, Harry pauses by the doorway where the suspension rod is tucked into place. He allows himself twenty pull-ups, the strain on his muscles excruciating, but he wants to be exhausted.

5:14. Awake and sweating. He thinks of the boy on the sidewalk, how shadows collected in his hollowed-out face, the small scoop at his neck and collarbone. Thin, frightened—it reminds Harry of a dead doe he found last month along the trail, its black eyes still open and unwavering, its body untouched. Left to a sacred death even by scavengers.

“I’m sorry,” he assured it. Sorry for the natural order of things, or for nothing, sometimes an apology is just nice to hear, in death.

Then a moment skipped and he turned away from it. Wondered after its mother.

 _I should apologize,_ he thinks, eyelids slipping closed. _I should apologize._

*  
*

In the morning, Harry arrives a bit late to his shift, Amelia rushing him inside to handle the customers asking after their usual orders. Well-liked as he is, he only gets a few rounds of light teasing, soothed over by their gratitude in tips.

He gets the idea when he pawns off a scone to a woman, _sorry’s_ pouring out of his mouth. Baked goods in the form of apologies have always saved him countless times. He should—Harry fumbles around to reach for a brown paper bag, wincing as he drops a pair of tongs onto the floor.

Amelia clicks her tongue. “Who’s that for?”

“This boy,” Harry says, crinkling the paper as he folds it down. “I’m gonna run over and give it to him.”

“The boy at Holloway’s?” He can hear her frown.

“Yeah.”

Harry chews his thumbnail, stands in front of the glass door. He smoothes out the front of his shirt, licks around his teeth. Amelia clears her throat from behind him.

“Get a move on, then.”

The walk seems to take too long, thoughts creeping up to hold their hands at his neck, his joints stiff with nervous energy. He lingers, hand at the doorknob, before a customer rushes out with a few polite apologies. Now or never.

Harry opens the door and peers inside the small bookshop. He finds it immediately lovely—lush, moody, a rose-patterned wallpaper adorning the side where a darkwood counter is built in.

Where the boy stands. His fingernails rap on the wood as he reads something. Harry watches him for a moment too long, finding himself frozen when the boy senses a presence and looks up. They lock eyes.

Struck dumb, Harry holds up the bag as if it explains everything. “I brought you a cookie.”

The boy—whose eyes shine with some sort of rare brilliancy—allows a questioning look to fall across his iris. Harry watches his mouth fall open slightly. There is nothing that falls awkwardly on him.

“Sorry?”

“I—well,” Harry steps forward to the counter, only two strides, “I wanted to apologize. For spooking you last night. Sneaking up on you, with no warning—”

“You didn’t—”

“—just assuming that was normal. It really wasn’t. I’m sorry. So,” Harry smiles, an orange rind, chest tight, “I baked you this. I'm a baker. I work, um, across the street. At Blueberry. You know, by the bus stop?”

A smile creeps slowly across the boy’s face. “Yeah, I know. I've seen you sometimes.”

That small recognition flutters against Harry's heart. “Oh! Really? I mean, yeah, I've seen you sometimes, too. It’s why I wanted to talk to you.” The boy’s eyebrows quirk upward, taken by the phrases that keep tumbling cotton out of Harry’s mouth.

“You’re relentless, aren’t you?”

Harry doesn't know how to answer that. “Sorry. I'm really nervous.”

The boy makes a face, clearly enjoying the spectacle, mouth drawn up into a pleasant line. “No need.”

“Right.”

They maintain eye contact, both breathing at the same pace, chests parallel in their rise-and-fall. Harry remembers the bag in his hands and holds it out to the boy, who takes it with both hands.

His fingers are thin spider’s legs, the cuticle worn away on his nails, much like Harry’s. Anxious habit as much as it is a pleasure in doing damage.

“It’s chocolate chip,” Harry informs him, gracious, “I’m kind of known around here for them.” He pauses. “That was a pretty big-headed thing to say, wasn’t it?”

“You really are nervous,” the boy laughs, placing the bag down. He considers him for a moment, silver and open in a way Harry hasn’t seen yet. “I’m Louis.”

“Harry,” he rushes out, fingertips wondering whether or not to shake his hand. Louis doesn’t offer so Harry doesn’t ask. His elbows come up to rest on the counter, fingers laced together so that Louis can rest his chin on top of them. “You’re young.”

“Not too young,” Harry shrugs. “‘M twenty. Taking a gap year. Before college.”

“Oh,” Louis blinks. “That’s smart.”

Sweet chimes knock against the door, an older woman walking inside. Her pale blue dress is out-of-place against the dark wallpaper. Harry looks back to Louis at hearing the light timbre of his voice, “I’m twenty-four myself. Just saving up money for higher education.”

“By working here?”

“Yeah,” Louis looks around at the shop, picks at the cuticle of his thumb. “I didn’t finish college on time. I’m a bit behind everyone else.”

“So am I,” Harry nods. “It’s normal to want to, you know, live a little. Get experience.”

Louis exhales a “yeah,” bent in its cream softness. The switch in tone swirls a hot apprehension in Harry’s throat. “I’ve got to sort through some new arrivals before eleven,” Louis says, and it’s a clear dismissal.

Harry shuffles. He hits the toe of his boot against the wood, embarrassed shoulders caving in around a simple, “Well.” Then he looks back up at Louis.

Light from the window cuts into his face, making him look haunted. Tired.

“I guess I’ll just,” Harry gestures vaguely to the door. “Hope you like the cookie.”

“Harry,” Louis almost slurs, the name new in his mouth, tentative, “wait a sec.”

Harry stares at him, the small shaking of his yellowed skin. Louis reaches beneath the counter and his hand resurfaces with a black sharpie. Around them, a family of four is broken up and browsing amongst the closed aisles, near the classics and the young adult fiction.

“I do this thing,” Louis starts, lips quirked so that they curve up at the ends, wolfish. “I write a lot of things down—not reminders or grocery lists or anything,” Louis prattles on, reaching for Harry’s hand, “but quotes. From songs I like. Notebooks full of them.”

“What d’you listen to?” Harry steps further again towards the wood to accommodate him.

“There’s not much I don’t listen to, really,” Louis shakes his head. “I don’t quite have—the patience for finding new music, anymore,” his chest deflates on a breath out, labored. “But I like to keep quotes. Collect them.” He lets Louis take his hand, warmth peppering the places he touches so gingerly. Harry’s never been touched like that—like he’s precious.

Louis uncaps the sharpie. The sweet glue smell makes his head cloudy for a moment. Harry tries to process the cold from Louis’ fingertips. His eyes wander to his hand and Louis admonishes, “Don’t look!”

Harry laughs, “Why not? It’s my hand!”

“It’s a surprise,” Louis hushes, “almost done.”

In the rest of the time it takes Louis to finish his work, Harry watches him, the flex of the sinewy muscles and tendons of his arm, exposed by the rolled-up sweater.

It’s thrifted—he’d seen it at Savers a week ago and thought of buying it. Looks better on Louis, looks better in the dark greens, striped with purples and blacks. He seems so small and dark in the afternoon, capable and exhausted like some New York dream.

Louis taps his knuckles, the click of the marker being capped drawing Harry back. “All done.”

“And I can’t look?” Harry withdraws his hand.

“You can do anything you want,” Louis tucks the front of his fringe back into place, the retreating-in having happened quickly.

Harry just nods, “I won’t look. For you.”

_For you, for you. You will never sleep alone._

Eyes wet, Louis exhales some soft “okay,” prayer-like. They nod tacit goodbye’s at each other, a smile tugging at Harry’s mouth, refusing to surface.

Before Harry slides out of the heavy front door, Louis’ high timbre stops him. He turns and sees Louis fixing him with a toothy grin, eyes mercurial, “Thanks for the cookie.”

Harry returns the grin so hard it hurts.

Knowing Louis can see him cross the street, he presses his fingers into his mouth to contain his boyish laughter, and keeps his sleeve pulled all the way down.

*  
*

 _The nights that I twist on the rack_  
_Is the time that I feel most at home_

Harry bites his thumb, his fingers stilling at the laptop keyboard. The library for once is loud, students milling in and out for end-of-the year parties with their professors.

They’re singing “Tequila,” fake shot glasses lined with apple juice, and it makes Harry miss childhood, miss Niall, and tornado sirens, and pineapple juice.

_Now you're all gone got your make-up on and you're not coming back, can’t you come back?—_

Small towns are always exclusionary. Harry remembers his own fish-mouthed neighbors, gawking at the gaunt drug addict, whispering after Niall’s shadow when that was all he was in the end months.

They don’t see suffering. Or they see it, but it’s foreign to them, like Zain’s darker skin, his accent, and they wore all sorts of symbols and cast all their private spells against them. Small towns like the one he lives in now—homeless youth pushed into one shelter, fed by one soup kitchen, but the private school football field needs new bleachers.

Nobody goes around writing their suffering on a stranger’s skin. But Louis never seemed the type to fit in with the rest of the cherry-pie-eye’d crowd.

There’s something about this boy. Something holy.

He downloads the song onto his iPhone and grabs an apple juice shot on the way out.

*  
*

Flustered, when he showers later that night, Harry turns the dial all the way to the right under “hot” and lets it run on his back. He reads and re-reads the two lines again, fascinated with the way the ink stains, with how even when he scrubs it clean it’s still there.

He dreams he takes Louis to bed and finds bones beneath his sweater.

*  
*

_Rooftop, their feet dangling over the white painted gutter. Harry pushes a handful of blueberries past his lips and chews, showing his open mouth to Niall, who is sleepy, so sleepy, against Zain’s shoulder._

_Smoking helps keep the joint pain down, and Niall soon is snoring in Zain’s arms, and Harry thinks for what must be the millionth time how hard it is to remember that he’s dying._

_Zain kisses his head, every dua sung on short breath, running into each other. "Inna lillaahi maa 'akhatha, wa lahu maa 'a'taa, wa kullu shay'in 'indahu bi'ajalin musamman…faltasbir waltahtasib…”_

_“Look at that,” Harry says._

_“What,” Zain mumbles, miserable._

_“The sky’s purple.”_

_Niall’s snore stutters, and they tense, but he lets out a small whine through his nose and all is still alright. Zain’s arms wind tighter around him. He feels things on a different level than Harry does. He’s always felt more._

_“Gonna storm bad tomorrow,” Zain says. Harry meets his eyes. “That’s what that means. The purple.”_

_Harry sniffs, “Sure it doesn’t mean anything else?”_

_“Nah,” Zain smiles. “Just rain.”_

_*_  
_*_

The one rusted replay of a memory, for an hour: nurses running into the room and Harry can’t go in. Nurses run into the room and Harry isn’t there. He’s in a two-story house with a needle in his arm and even in the bliss of that brown warmth he feels it when the tie is severed. He feels it when Niall goes.

*  
*

 _La lune, trop pâle, caresse l'opale de tes yeux blasés…_  
_Princesse de la rue, soit la bienvenue dans mon coeur brisé…_

*  
*

Harry unlocks his phone, silences the alarm. It’s just past eight. There’s no time to run or eat breakfast but he’s not sure he wants to do either. Food sits sick in his stomach and his knees today feel brittle, like the rest of him. Sometimes he wakes up feeling like he still uses.

While the toothbrush is locked between his teeth, he makes a series of small pinches with his thumb and middle fingernail, down the length of his arm until he reaches the prominent vein on the underside of his wrist. Then he scratches lightly across it, around his neck, waiting for goosebumps. They don’t come.

He opens his bathroom cabinet, mirror displaced temporarily, and picks through the available options. There’s benadryl, but he can’t take twenty and work a full shift. At least he knows it’s there.

Shame washes over his shoulders, and Harry shuts his eyes tightly together, avoids his reflection, spits in the sink.

 

*  
*

That afternoon, the sky is rosy. Harry procures a snickerdoodle from the undesirable-looking pile and stuffs it into a paper bag. He wipes under his eyes, grabbing a small star sticker and folding the top of the bag down. Harry looks at it in his hands, the small continuous appeal for company.

He can still see the faded curl of Louis’ scrawl, the faint I feel most at home peering up at him.

Amelia behind him tuts, “Keep your head outta the clouds, H.”

“My head’s not in the clouds,” Harry mumbles. “It’s here.”

“Yeah,” Amelia crosses to the counter, grabs the bottle of cleaner from under the sink. She spritzes the surface. “You’re here—but I can tell in your head you’re running.”

Harry itches his nose. His hand bumps awkwardly, the scratch sending a million nights reeling back behind his eyes again— _white lines, pretty baby, gold skin_ —nosebleeds. Zain and gin & tonics.

“Maybe,” Harry says, eventually. “What’s so wrong with that?”

There’s a pause, and it thickens things, and Harry wonders whether to pull it from her mouth or not, whatever it is she’s keeping from him. Amelia is only quiet when she’s swallowed a bomb.

“Hey,” Harry leans into his hip. “What’s going on? Like, really going on?”

She says nothing, her jaw flexing as she chews deep on a piece of gum. He watches her wipe down the countertop, twice, first with a rag and then with a paper towel, the solvent and lavender stuck in the room.

Every second she keeps her back to him, it flares hot in Harry’s throat. “You’ve always got something to say to me,” Harry’s shoulders barely move, hand on his hip, “but when I ask, that’s when you shut up?”

Amelia stills.

Her sweater, he never noticed, exposes more of her back shoulders than he’s ever seen. Usually Amelia keeps covered, even in the summer, citing the cool conditioning of the bakery as her reason. But when he watches her lean forward he can see every outline of the muscle, the skin sitting thin over her spine, her back shoulder blades.

“Just go. Be back in less than fifteen minutes, please.” She stares at the counter.

“Amelia,” Harry steps forward, “I’m—I didn’t mean to snap, I just—”

“No, you’re right,” Amelia straightens, sniffs, with her perpetual cold. “I’ve been having a rough time. Took it out on you. It’s my fault.”

“It’s,” Harry says, wary, “it’s alright. You know? Everyone’s got bad days. So.”

She turns around, hand gripping tight to the cleaner. Her smile is sincere, the rows of her teeth strange and large. “Go on, kid. I’m fine.”

Her head cocks to the left, a maternal gesture—the way mothers seem to look at you when they’re processing their love for you. “I’m gonna finish making the batter for the wedding cake, okay?”

Harry doesn’t get a chance to respond. She walks past him into the back room, where they prep the bigger projects. She calls, suddenly bright, “Flip the sign before you go!”

“Okay,” slips out of his mouth.

*  
*

It’s humid, his jeans feeling heavy and stuck to his legs. Harry flips the sign and exits with the bell sound following him outside the door, bag pinched between his fingers. He can see Louis through the window chatting with another girl behind the desk, a book tucked beneath a reddish-brown jumper.

That same song chimes when Harry comes inside, Louis’ head turning sharply to greet the customer, then softening considerably when he recognizes Harry. _Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me._ The girl he’s talking to is wearing a bubblegum pink hijab, her eyelashes long and framing dark doe eyes.

“Hi,” Harry smiles.

“Hi?” Louis returns his smile, only barely, his voice cradled and curious. “They don’t cut your pay when you leave to come over here, do they?”

“No,” Harry shakes his head. “I’m in the clear.”

“Well they’d cut mine,” Louis quirks an eyebrow, “so I’m afraid I can’t really talk today.”

“Don’t be silly,” the girl perks up, eyes fireflies at night, “you could get away with anything. You’re like the son Mr. Holloway’s never had.”

“He has four sons,” Louis comments, flat.

“Well, none of them are here, are they?” She makes a clever show of looking around the room. “So I guess you’re the only Prodigal Son here, or something.”

Louis meets Harry’s eye, then waves his hand towards the girl. The smile that works its way over his mouth is proud. “That’s Jazaa. Jazaa, this is Harry. He’s a baker.”

“I can see that,” Jazaa laughs through her teeth. Her fine, silvery gaze scans him up-and-down, assessing.

“You can?”

“You’ve got some frosting on your face,” Jazaa points, then retracts her hand. Harry reaches up to rub off the dry sugar. Louis stares pointedly at the paper bag in Harry’s hand.

“What’s that?”

“Oh,” Harry rubs his hand on his jeans, free of the frosting, “it’s another cookie.”

“Another?” Louis flicks under his nose. “Just how many are you planning on bringing here, anyways?”

“Well today’s Monday,” Harry explains, “so just two more.” He shrugs, his arm itching beneath his sweater, his fingers fidgeting against his leg. “How’d you like the other one, by the way? Is it—okay if I—um, am doing this?”

“It’s fine,” Louis replies, unaffected.

Jazaa leans forward on the counter, tone aloof, “Yeah, he doesn’t eat them anyways. I’ve been eating all the ones you’ve brought.”

Louis’ head snaps, sends her a clear displeased look. Harry startles, an “oh” escaping on a nervous laugh, but their reactions are wasted. Jazaa is already moving past them towards the stock room. Her frame disappears behind the swinging door, a lithe trace, and then it’s just he and Louis, hands empty.

It’s the emptiness that stays.

“Harry,” Louis starts.

“You could’ve told me,” Harry rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t—I feel like sort of an idiot. I mean. I’ve only ever been honest about,” he gestures between them, unsure of the word to describe it, settling on a stunted, “this.”

But Louis is all patience, the raw bite of Harry’s emotions eluding him completely. He stands like a prophet there in the middle of the bookstore, existing in front of him with starry amusement.

“I’m allergic,” he says, “and you were nervous. Didn’t have the heart to tell you.”

“I wasn’t that bad,” Harry mutters, petulant.

Louis observes him, eyes flickering all over his face. “I should’ve said something,” and Harry can see the distinct, blue crescents beneath his eyelashes, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Harry ducks his head down. “I guess I was pretty forward. Bit embarrassing, maybe.”

“No,” Louis shakes his head. “You’re good, Harry.”

“Thank you,” eyes watery, “so are you.”

Louis laughs slightly, “You don’t really know me.”

“I’d like to.”

“Hm,” Louis turns away from Harry and picks up the sharpie from the counter, approaching with placidity. His eyebrows flick as he grabs hold of Harry’s hand, fingertips cold as ever. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Harry’s eyebrows furrow, slight, Louis turning his palm over in his small hands. “Why?”

“It’s just not.”

The marker is a light touch on his skin, and Harry can’t figure it out, the quiet cloud that seems to be at home in Louis’ eyes, the way he moves slow through the room. Louis adds, an afterthought, “I’m not a good thing.”

Harry knows that feeling.

— _I promise, I promise,_ legs giving out, leaning against telephone poles, Zain’s body and brimming eyes, naloxone still fresh in his system, _I promise this is the last time, I promise_ —

When Louis finishes writing, he holds tighter to Harry’s hand, letting the heat spread out evenly between them. Harry only hears, sharp and sudden as a pulse, _park that car drop that phone sleep on the floor dream about me—_

He blurts out, “Can I still see you?”

“Of course you can,” Louis murmurs. “I’d like you to.” He’s close, drawn in the same way Harry is, that imperceptible holiness palpable and ashy in Harry’s mouth. Louis steps away, smile a thin flower, “I want you to stick around.”

For a moment Harry thinks he’s imagined it—the peace that’s settled over the furniture and their loose-limbed youth. Louis exhales, “Okay?”

_Dream about me._

“Okay,” Harry nods. His eyes catch Jazaa watching from the doorway, face unreadable until she sees Harry’s looking at her. Then she smiles, brief, and disappears back into the stockroom.

“Don’t disappoint,” Louis rocks on his heels, hands clasped behind his back.

“Never,” Harry walks backwards to the door. They look at each other the whole way.

Relentless in his ears— _Dream about me, dream about me, dream about me._

*  
*

_Don’t fix my smile, life is long enough._

Harry adds the song to the playlist he made, preferring to leave it untitled for now. He rolls the sleeve down and covers the writing, treats it like the inside of a locket.

Later in the day, service slow and unyielding, Louis visits in the middle of his break to pick up two iced coffees and a vegetable salad for Jazaa. He’s coated in nuances, in sunlight.

“Want anything?”

“No,” Louis smiles, “I pack food for work. Gotta save money.”

“Oh,” Harry frowns, “right, yeah. Makes sense. Sorry.”

“No worries.”

While Harry rings up the order, Louis traces his fingertip on the glass case where they keep the pastries. He taps it. “You make all these?”

“Most of ‘em,” Harry nods. He places the two coffees in a tray. “Sure you don’t want one? I make the tarts,” he boasts, “they’re top quality, promise.”

Louis shakes his head politely. “No, I shouldn’t. I guess they just make me remember things.”

“Like what?”

“My mom grew up in Paris,” Louis recounts, crossing to the countertop to grab the tray from Harry, and he’s wearing less than usual, a blue sweater over a grey t-shirt. The slope of his narrow shoulders accented from the thinner fabric. “So I grew up,” Louis gestures to the case, “eating a lot of that.”

“Spoiled by sweets,” Harry smiles.

“Something like that,” he nods, returning Harry’s smile. He pauses for a moment, dust caught on the ends of his eyelashes. The bakery is empty. “Sometimes when I walk past here, I can smell you baking the bread.”

Harry leans his elbow on the surface, chin tucked into his palm. “I love that smell.”

“I do, too,” Louis says, “because it makes me remember.”

“That’s weird,” Harry straightens, childhood tar-thick in his chest. “I would think most people try to forget.”

“I think people make memories into ghosts,” he fixes his hair, at home in his bones, unaware, like he isn’t casting spells by licking his lips. “I think it’s easier that way, to put the blame somewhere else. But we’re our own ghosts,” Louis looks up at him, a storm gathering in his pupil. “We haunt ourselves.”

“Yeah,” Harry says, lost. It smells like gingerbread. It’s a million and one murders in his head, all the memories piling into each other. “Maybe.”

Louis nods, exhales. His lips press together, regretting his words. “Well. I’ll see you around.”

“Could I—” Harry starts, hand open and reaching for him. Louis’s eyelids are pale, his body angled towards Harry in want. “Could I maybe get your number?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll text you,” Harry assures, slipping his phone out and giving it to Louis to program his name in.

“Don’t let me wait on you,” Louis smiles. Harry takes the phone from his hand.

“I won’t.”

“Alright, then,” he waves his fingers. “Bye.”

“Bye,” Harry murmurs. He unlocks his phone with a tentative thumb, curious about what Louis saved himself as. But it’s nothing, or everything—his full name, uncapitalized, small.

When he closes that night, Harry thinks around Louis’ words, and for every memory that sparks alive Harry imagines it as a ghost. One ghost, two, sitting at the corner table and watching him sweep the floors.

By the time he’s locked up, nine follow him outside into the warm sugar night, huddling around his cigarette, asking for something.

 _I don’t know what you want,_ Harry thinks. _I don’t know what you want._

*  
*

The week is hushed. Not a lick of life to speak of—Harry works, goes home, makes a TV dinner or eats nothing at all. For the first time in a year since moving away from his hometown there’s someone he’s waiting on. It’s a gift in the same way it’s a burden. He’s gotten used to being alone.

By Thursday he and Louis have only texted briefly, most of what’s in Louis’ grey-boxed talk is apology after apology, _Can’t make it tonight sorry :( xx_ , _Wish I could see u but Im so busy x_ , _No sorry can’t tonight feel sick :( but we’ll talk soon._

He’s sitting at one of the small tables in Blueberry, taking his short lunch break and eating a croissant sandwich to Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn…and waiting. For a bell to ring, or the ceiling to crash in, maybe. For Louis to text back.

 

 **Sent 12:36pm**  
Hey :) it’s jazz night at Cubbyhole maybe we could swing by and watch? Live band and everything!

 

Ten minutes later, Harry licks the flakes off his bottom lip, the corner of his mouth, phone still held hot and silent in his palm. Summer rain clings to the window, his skin dewey with humidity—

— _Zain laughs into his hands, face flush with love. “Come back to bed,” he urges, looking smaller than Harry’s ever seen him on the king bed. King for a king._

_“I’ll be just a second,” Harry smiles, turning back to his face in the mirror, his track-marked, pale skin, his lips bitten red._

_He watches Zain’s body in the doorway, then_ —

Harry blinks. His phone vibrates against the table, sends his heart stuttering. When he looks over at Amelia, she’s chewing on her fingernail.

“Welcome back to Earth,” she teases. “Where did you go?”

A small smile, a reflex. “Nowhere special,” Harry answers. He opens the message.

 

 **Received 12:49pm**  
Sounds so fun xx Im not working till Friday though, got some things to do

 

 **Sent 12:51pm**  
Okay! Talk to you then

 

If this is anything it’s a practice in disinterest. Harry never won any wars by fighting them passionately, everything always burned and smelled like oil. But this time he’ll dampen down desire. He’ll do better.

*  
*

Fifteen donut holes and a strong cup of green tea. The whole bakery smells like steeped leaves and Windex, Amelia wiping down the windows and Harry using a natural cleaner on the tables. They work in silence.

It’s only after the register pings shut that Harry notices Amelia in front of the counter, regarding him closely.

She worries her bottom lip. “I have to talk to you about something real quick.”

Harry glances at the clock. It’s almost six. He was planning on getting home early to take a longer run than usual—go along the river, come back with sore bones and mosquito bites.

Still he blinks at her, nods. “Okay.”

“It’s about how I’ve been acting lately.”

“You don’t have to explain that,” Harry shrugs, dividing their tips, the smell of money sticking to his fingers. “It’s none of my business.”

“It is,” Amelia eyes his movements. Her hand reaches out and stills him. They look at each other, and Harry wishes there was music or static or a faucet running to fill the quiet.

“I deal with this bad thing,” she says, sentiment lodged in her throat. “I’ve—I’ve dealt with it for a long time. But sometimes it revisits me, like an old friend,” her eyes shaking, “and it’s hard to turn her away.”

“Amelia,” Harry holds tight to her hand, “it’s okay.”

“I get sick,” her nails dig into his fingers, “and I get mean, and I’m sorry. It’s no excuse, but I wanted you to know.”

“I forgive you,” he says, because there’s nothing else he can give her. It won’t make her feel better to know she’s not alone. She already knows people suffer—he can see it when she smiles.

“Okay.” She swallows. “Okay, good.” Her hand grips his firmly, once, then it slips from his grasp, bony. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me for that,” Harry shakes his head. She stares at him, and he almost never noticed how the brown of her iris is flecked gold. “You deserve people being kind to you. That’s basic human decency. That’s what you deserve,” he exhales. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” she whispers, jaw flexing. “I’m gonna head home, now.”

“Alright—you sure you’ll be fine?”

“Yeah,” Amelia chirps. Harry sees her wipe at her eyes. “Just a short walk. Clears my head, anyways. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you.”

Harry watches her disappear behind the store glass, pulling her jacket tighter around her middle, looking both ways before she crosses the street and becomes part of the nighttime. Briefly, he wonders what it must be like to always want to hide. Then he decides he’s not going to think on it.

*  
*

_“Come get your boy, faggot,” the man laughs._

_It’s alright to say those kinds of words here. They’re best received with a smile, a quiet ‘yes, this is what I am, you can call me that.’_

_Harry tries to wind the wool coat into his skin, cover the fishnets beneath his shorts, heading into the bar to pick up the stained glass fragments of his last living friend. He’s slumped over the dark wood, Margot polishing a glass, worrying after him. Stevie Nicks on the jukebox._

_“Zain,” Harry murmurs, at his ear. Margot turns away._

_He’s too skinny, surviving on sugars like this. Harry wants to do the same for him what they did for himself these past two years. Love him like a laceration, without shame. But loving doesn’t come as easy for Harry._

_“Zain,” he chants, until he lifts his head. His eyelids are swollen, dark cranberry, eyes feral._

_“Harry,” Zain croaks. “I saw him.”_

_“Saw who,” Harry asks, not wanting an answer._

_“I saw Ni,” his shoulders square. God, he’s so fucking thin. “I saw him laughing inside, I came running, Margot caught me screaming,” Zain shakes his head. “I didn’t know I was screaming.”_

_Harry rubs circles on his back. This death eats them both._

_“She said the first shot was free if I shut the fuck up. So I saw I had a fifty in my pocket and I—stayed. I’m sorry, Harry,” Zain clutches onto his coat, “I’m sorry.” He stutters, then wails into the fabric._

Just like the white winged dove, sings a song…

_Families eating burgers stare across the room. They used to do this to Harry, too, when he sat on the street holding out a mug and praying for dimes. This isn’t supposed to be Zain’s. He’s above this ending._

_“You’re alright,” Harry says. “Gonna take you home.”_

_“I want Niall,” Zain shudders. “I want him, I want him, I want him, Alhamdulilah, I want him,” out the door, the laughing man still laughing, the song playing like nobody’s heart ever breaks._

_And Zain still crying, “I want him,” enough times to kill a star. To carve a black nothingness in the world like the world carved into him._

*  
*

More ghosts. They’re always in the shape of tree spirits and now, somehow, comforting as Harry pulls the metal grate down and locks it. They stand on the street, wrap around the corner.

He stands and cracks his back, hands resting on the small of it, when a blue shadow catches his eye across the street. In the lamplight, as always, the boy is impossible. Harry wasn’t expecting him.

“Louis,” Harry calls, running to meet him outside Holloway’s.

And there it is—in his long, elegant neck. The ephemeral tension Harry always felt off him, still not-quite angelic, not-quite goodness.

Louis isn’t happy to see him. His ghosts are laughing behind their hands.

“Harry,” Louis acknowledges. He turns on his rough heel, caught. “How are you?”

“You said you weren’t working until Friday,” Harry grins. He feels just shy of manic, the way it used to feel when he scored and parked his car behind the church. “Gotta say, you had me fooled.”

Louis’ eyes are grey, empty, disinterested by the prospect of Harry’s hurt feelings. “I filled in for Tommy today, okay? It’s not like I avoided telling you.” He brushes past him, hand curled protectively on the backpack strap.

Harry notices him briefly—it would have made him pause, the particular bend inward of Louis’ legs, the hospital pallor, but he was too angry, then, and all he could see was the ecstasy of his own mounting heartbreak.

“You did. You could’ve been honest with me,” Harry follows, strides gulping space between them down to nothing. “I would’ve left you alone.”

“Whatever. Go home, Harry,” Louis mutters. “You’re not going to find what you’re looking for here.”

He can feel the tenuous breath leave him, sliding out carefully, when he stops. His mouth crumples, and he thinks of Niall—

_“Dunno,” Niall laughs, to himself. Sadness rests in his eyelids. “Just don’t think I feel it, s’all.”_

_“Love?” Harry pauses the game, controller lax in his hands._

_Embarrassed, Niall rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah,” eyelashes fanned down. “I dunno.”_

_“Well, maybe…” Harry trails off, unsure. “Maybe you will, you know. Maybe you just haven’t met someone yet that makes—”_

_“Maybe,” Niall interrupts. “I just hear you talking crazy over someone and it makes me think…” He bites his thumb, self-conscious. “I just never felt like that. About anyone.”_

_There’s nothing but the hum of the PlayStation console, Niall’s cologne heady and cinnamon between them._

_Harry blinks. “I’m sorry.”_

_Niall smiles. The low light in the basement leaves his eyes dark, paints him so goddamn tragic. “I’ve got faith for you though, Hazza,” and Harry will remember this when he walks home, the faint touch of Niall’s fingertips to his wrist. “I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking for.”_

—Like the others, that rosewater memory shudders out of him, leaves a perfume, his hands shaking. When Harry comes to, he’s on his knees on the sidewalk, Louis’ backpack in front of him and a white star hitting his forehead.

“Jesus,” Louis is saying, far-away, “I didn’t mean to—fuck, hey, you’re alright, aren’t you?”

Harry looks up at him, catalogs what’s real. Blue-black eyes. Black leather bag. Even blacker, the good night, the inside of the storefronts along the sidewalk. Louis’ hot exhale hits his mouth then, opens it.

“Fine,” Harry says through his teeth. Then again when he stands, knees chattering, bones too big for his body, “fine.”

“Look, just—” Louis falters for a moment, “I don’t live very far.”

“I don’t either,” Harry offers, wiping his hands on his jeans, “I can walk fine. It’s not the walking that does it.”

Louis inhales sharply through his nose, frustrated. “Okay, but. I can’t just fucking leave you on the street after that.” He isn’t pleased. “So. It’s about ten minutes away. You think you can walk for ten more minutes?”

“I told you,” Harry says, eyes half-moons, delirious from remembering his dead, “it’s not the walking.”

“Whatever,” Louis relents, without malice. He seems more comfortable this way, washed clean in the lamp glow, his collarbones deep and pocketing jeweled night. Harry wants him.

“I haven’t had an easy time,” Harry explains. “I remember things.”

Softly, Louis drops his hands to his sides. “I know. I think you’ve got a lot you carry.”

Harry smiles. “My mom used to say I was made for that,” stepping closer, falling into line next to Louis, the both of them having accepted the presence of the other. “Broad shoulders. Broad everything,” Harry gestures, “built for carrying heavy stuff on my back.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah.”

The headlights of a solitary car streak across the brick facade of a building, encapsulating them in white, before driving down the road in the direction of the lake. Pop music rolls out the windows.

They watch the tail lights disappear into blackness. The ghosts watch them, too, more of them made from the memory of highways and open car windows. Harry turns his head to find Louis already looking at him, curious.

“I see you,” Louis murmurs, all sweet-milk, “and I always feel like you’re about to collapse.”

“You see me?”

“All the time. Even in dreams.” Louis unzips his backpack, fumbling around in it for a moment, surfacing with a blue gatorade, un-opened. “Jazaa bought it for me today. Have it.”

“Thanks,” Harry takes it from him, his hand completely covering Louis’ over the plastic, the disparity of temperature a shock. “Your hands are freezing,” he says.

“Leave it. I’m just always cold.”

He takes a sip, the click and thud of their shoes threading together. They walk in the middle of the street, hands knocking when Louis falters, mumbling about being tired, needing to rest.

Harry nods, but he’s been resting. He’s been asleep for months, had enough dreams to fill jars. He doesn’t want to keep walking inside them. He just wants to wake up.

*  
*

Ten minutes are gone in what seems half the time, Harry ripping at his cuticles to keep from holding Louis’ hand. The house he stops in front of is small, one-level, unremarkable. He didn’t expect anything else.

Inside, there’s a welcome mat on the floor to greet him. “Home Sweet Home,” with a red heart. Harry avoids leaving his shoes on top of it.

“I’m making tea,” Louis calls from the kitchen. Every cell of the room is fuzzy. The lights are low, make the walls seem foreign, like heaven.

Harry steadies himself on an end table. “Okay,” he calls back.

“I don’t have any milk or sugar,” Louis continues. Harry stands at the doorway.

“Your ankles are small,” he says.

Louis looks at him over his shoulder and smiles politely. “The smallest part of me.”

The ghosts stay on the outside of the room, but Harry can hear them breathing. There’s a question he wants to ask and since he lost his mind all that time ago he never had a problem talking. More of a problem was shutting up, not babbling away on speed, not making idle threats when he drank. But now it’s too big. He stands there very still, willing it to crawl itself out.

“You’re all gold,” Louis grins. He taps his own chest. “That necklace is always shining.”

“It was Zain’s,” Harry replies, absent-mindedly. Then, “An old friend. Can I ask you something?”

Steam in little streams escapes the mouth of the tea pot. “Sure,” Louis agrees. He sits at the counter, hands folded, bony wrists exposed. Thinking better of it, he pulls the sleeves over his rough knuckles.

“Do you want me to keep at this?”

Louis blinks at him. “Harry.”

“Do you want anything from me?” _I don’t know what you want._ “I want things from you.”

“I know,” Louis bites into his bottom lip. “I know. I’m sorry I was mean.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Harry moves into the kitchen, sits across from him. Every odd lilt off the AC unit carries the smell of antiseptic. He fidgets for a moment before covering Louis’ hands with his own. They don’t move away, any of his thin, cold fingers, so Harry lets his thumb trace over it. Maternal. _I’m here now, you can go to bed._

“I don’t normally do this.” Louis pauses. “Don’t think anyone’s even been in my house since I moved here.”

“You keep to yourself?”

“Yeah,” Louis nods. “You?”

“I don’t have people over,” Harry says. “I can be mean, sometimes. I get out of my head.”

“Me too.”

Louis smiles then, just the gentle corner of his mouth curling. It makes his exhaustion withdraw, for a moment, the apples of his cheeks coloring and then fading again. A flare. Harry debates unwrapping his wounds right there in the kitchen.

“I don’t want to be mean to you,” Louis looks at their hands. “You’re just so nice to me. Nicer than anybody.”

“People aren’t nice to you?”

“No,” his eyes flit up to Harry’s, hold him there. “They’re not.”

“Let me be nice to you,” Harry murmurs. “I want to do it.”

“I’m tired,” Louis says instead. He rises, all long white wine skin, stretched along his skeleton and Harry can see the haunt. As if every ghost he led here has taken residence in his teeth. “Come with me to bed?”

“You want that,” Harry asks, unsure of the lines they’re crossing. Until tonight there had been too many yellow warnings. “You want me?”

Harry needs it out loud, but Louis just nods. He could pass for a newly-risen dead. It scares him—but most things do, even the things he knows.

“I don’t want to be alone tonight,” Louis wraps his arms around his torso. It pinches the sweater. He’s small enough to fit in his palm, a diamond.

“I don’t either,” Harry agrees. He stands, wavering, his whole body broad and covering Louis’ before they’ve even touched.

“I’ve known you forever,” Louis whispers, mouth barely moving, acne scars prominent on his skin where he scratched them clean. “I’ve known you forever and a day.”

“Let me be nice to you,” Harry repeats, the last fragment of affection between them before his arms come up around him, expecting bulk but meeting bone, hiding the starkness of that contrast in his eyes, shut tight. They hold each other in the kitchen, tea pot whirring.

“I have to get that,” Louis says.

“Then get it. Just come back.”

Louis walks, stray, silencing the whistling pot and shutting the stove down. When he looks again at Harry, he’s electric, eyes dotted in sparks, seconds away from a short-circuit. “Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” Harry answers. “Come here.”

“No,” Louis grins, shy. “You come here.”

Against the stovetop, still warm from use, Harry holds him again. Molasses mouth pressed to neck. They stand two june dandelions, wrapped around each other, unmoving.

“What happened to you,” Louis wonders, muffled in Harry’s shoulder. “What made you bad?”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Harry says. “I’m tired of remembering.”

“How do you know who you are without it?”

“I don’t know who I am,” Harry kisses his neck, up to the underside of his earlobe. He bites it, gentle. Louis’ fingers dig into his back, seeking to excavate. Harry pulls away to look at him. “Talking it doesn’t help anything.”

“Talking what?”

“Myself. What I am. What I want,” Harry shakes his head, slight. “You think it’s gonna help. But we’re all lost in something. We’re all lonely in ways we can’t help.”

“I want to help,” Louis urges, fingertips dusting across Harry’s jaw.

“You can’t,” Harry says, kissing his eyelid. “You can’t.”

Louis’ eyes flood with tears, fumbling over, the tracks straight and narrow down the slope of his face.

Harry presses his tongue to them, lapping up the salt, kissing again up to the corners of his eyes. There’s no movement besides the whimpering of his small hands, trying to contain the bulk of Harry’s body. He wants to be contained. Louis already knows this.

“I want to sleep,” Louis exhales, forehead falling against Harry’s mouth. He traces his hands up Louis’ neck, thread gently through the hair there at the back that’s long and untrimmed.

“Let’s go to bed then,” Harry suggests, sea soft. Louis untangles himself from his arms, the room too cold so that Harry misses him right away.

Swaying in that low light, Louis touches his hand to the doorway and flicks the switch. There’s a lamp on somewhere, because it reaches this dark corner, and fills the whites of Louis’ eyes.

“Keep the lights off.”

“Okay.”

*  
*

_When they fucked, it always hurt._

_Harry thought it worked out that way. No amount of fucking brought feeling back. Their skin bruised, their mouths drooled peach juice and vodka, and still at night Niall’s body remained between them._

_They went looking for death. They fucked, drank, under the guise of wanting to go away. But it was the big kind of going away—the one where the door’s left open and the casket is empty._

_The week before Zain moved away, they fucked all day long, the sheets irreparably stained. A carton of cigarettes rested at Zain’s feet, and he was tender with Harry, the only time since Niall died._

_“We could go somewhere,” Zain had said. “Lots of ocean. Fuck, ocean for miles.” He nudged Harry’s calf, sore with overuse. “I think you’d look good with salt in your hair.”_

_That’s how Harry fell asleep._

_Zain murmured fantasies of them at the beach, of life beginning, of Niall bringing a six pack, and Harry dreamt wildly all night of the things they’d do, if Niall’d lived—the reckless parties, the weddings, the dark bars and bright motel rooms, backpacking across the country, falling asleep in fields._

_Never rehab, never hospitals, never the smell of antiseptic or vomit, never needles or hair loss or yellow skin. Never any of that fucking thing. Zain was crying when Harry woke. Zain who always cried when he woke and before he slept. Because Niall was everywhere, and he was still in love with him._

_Harry held his body, thinner now. He took over the story. It was the only nice thing Harry ever did for him._

_“Niall drinks the whole six pack,” he weaved, “he’s laughing at you, watching you chase seagulls down the beach. He thinks it’s hilarious.” Zain laughed too, nodded into Harry’s chest._

_“And he loves you,” Harry swallowed down a wave of weeping. “He loves you so much.”_

_When Harry woke again, there was nothing but the gold chain on the nightstand, a door left open. He hadn’t hesitated to stand and stretch, crack his neck, walk into the daytime. Without Zain, he was finally left alone to do what he wanted._

_The heroin stayed warm in his palm all the way to the gas station bathroom._

*  
*

The wood is warped beneath Harry’s feet from heating pipes, water damage. His heels lean into the creaks, following Louis through two doorways until they reach a smaller one, concealing a bedroom with nothing but a mattress and a painting replication on the left wall. Harry hovers behind him, hands coming up to drift in the dip of Louis’ waist.

Silent, Louis walks in and opens a blind a little bit, allowing more light into the space. He’s painted blue, looking at Harry across the room with all his wounds open.

Harry closes his eyes for a moment and thinks of stigmata.

When he opens his eyes again, Louis is still standing there, chest heaving, now a window cracked. That cool summertime is beginning, and for no knowable reason Harry feels nervous.

He wants to bite at the air. He wants to ask Louis about the bones beneath his skin but then he’s moving over to him at the window and their mouths smash together.

Pennies.

Harry licks against his mouth, begging to be let inside, hands pinning Louis by his hips to the window. Pennies, sugar. Louis tastes like blood.

He pulls away and kisses every inch of his face. Whatever is killing him is none of his business. Not tonight.

*  
*  
*

Golden and fresh on the cream mattress, Louis looks like a young god, always hungry.

Cautious, Harry presses the flat of his hand on the patch of skin where Louis’ sweaters have risen up. He doesn’t know why he asks, only that he has to. “Is this okay?”

“Just do it fast,” Louis swallows. His throat is tipped back long. He repositions himself, back pressing into Harry’s flushed and eager chest, grabbing Harry’s big hands and placing him where he wants him. “Like this.”

“Louis,” he murmurs.

“Please,” Louis urges. “I need you like this.”

“Okay,” Harry agrees.

*  
*  
*

His ribcage, maybe, is the most startling. Harry counts every bare bone, every wound left untended to. And Harry would tend to them, if he knew how, if he had any idea how to bring bodies back from the dead.

*  
*  
*

There’s nothing except for the wetness where Harry fingers Louis open.

He stays quiet, muscles tense with want. Harry presses too hard, selfish—he wants to see blood rise to the surface. Louis only mumbles commands, tripping over them, faster then slower, more then less. Harry tries not to give into being taken. But he’d do anything Louis asked, even swallow a shotgun, if it was what he wanted.

Louis gasps tight sounds, starlight sticking to them. Harry whispers at his ear from behind him, that ribcage working itself so hard it could splinter through his skin, “You’re beautiful. I can’t believe it,” he shudders. “You’re so beautiful.”

“Please don’t say that,” Louis begs, “don’t.”

It’s quiet after that, drawing out how his cock sinks into Louis, buried deep and feeling Louis around him, feeling like maybe he’d never fuck anyone else as long as he lived.

Better than that first rush, than all the bags of brown sugar he’d traded his life for.

“Fuck me,” Louis pleads, his hand coming to rest on top of Harry’s, fingers joining. It’s too tight, and Harry can smell him, that very distinct sweet rust, his sweat dripping in thin lines down the side of his face.

Harry bites down on the juncture of his neck and shoulder, skin slapping together, moans collecting into some sort of red prayer. “Fuck,” Harry gasps, “you’re perfect.”

“Stop it,” Louis chokes, everything stuck far back in his throat.

“No,” his hands holding tighter, _don’t break, don’t fall apart_. “God, Louis.”

The bad angle makes Harry’s back weak, and he pauses for a second to breathe, but he slips out of Louis too far, his chest suddenly cold without Louis pressed to it. Harry exhales, blinking down at where Louis has placed himself underneath him, guiding Harry’s cock back to his rim.

They look at each other.

“I want to remember how you look,” Louis says, eyes wet. “Do you want to remember me?”

“Yeah,” Harry nods, stuttering forward. He cages Louis in with his arms, pushing slowly into him again. “I don’t ever wanna forget.”

Louis brushes his hair off his forehead, neck straining to kiss him. Their tongues slide slick together, less insistent now. They kiss like they’re in love—they’re not, but it feels like it, and Harry slows his pace. He has it too, that thing stuck in his throat.

He looks at Louis, his thin red lips and tear-slathered eyelashes, and he wants to weep. For hours.

“I love you,” he tells him, his neck, his eyelids, his mouth. It might be the only time he’s ever said it to anyone. He can’t remember.

“I love you, too,” Louis cries, grinding tight into Harry’s movements, cum streaking up his bones and pale skin. His whole body trembles with orgasm, Harry watching him the whole time. He rubs his thumbs into the dip of his cheekbones, kisses his crying quiet.

“It’s alright,” Harry hushes. “I love you.”

Louis’ eyes peel open, looking at Harry, rapturous. His fingers move lightly all over Harry’s face. “Where did we fall in love?”

“Right here,” Harry smiles, still inside him. “Right on this mattress.”

“I was reading, having a—I was having a cigarette,” Louis sobs around the last word.

“Yes, you were having a cigarette.”

“Move, darling,” Louis urges him. “Move.”

“You were—beautiful,” Harry shuts his eyes. “I saw you and I knew. Fuck,” he exhales, almost laughing, Louis too weak underneath him to react. His eyes are cloudy.

“You were eating a nectarine in the doorway,” Louis whispers, gentle. This room is just for the good things. “You loved me right away.”

They don’t talk anymore about the false memory. Harry whines into Louis’ neck, slamming his hips against him and falling someplace dark and warm and eternal, like wading into the lake, Niall and Zain just behind him, shouting about creatures that would drag him to the bottom and eat him.

 _I hope they do_ , he’d thought.

“You’re here,” Louis murmurs, writhing.

“Yeah,” Harry shifts out of him, cum already leaking out, dripping onto the sheets bunched beneath them.

The room fills again with headlights. They lie next to each other, fingers flitting over each other’s bodies. Harry doesn’t say a word. He leans up and over Louis again, kisses every bit of bone where it pushes against the skin.

Hours pass that way. Pressing mouths to places where the hurt is worst. Louis drags his lips up and down the length of Harry’s forearm, biting at the vein on his wrist that used to be so good for shooting into. Harry eats Louis out, collecting himself on his tongue, devoted only to seeing Louis come apart again. This small blue room. The only place either of them feel safe enough to collapse—

—Love, just another way to collapse—

—“I don’t blame you,” Harry finally murmurs. They’re tucked together against the wall, sheets draped over Louis’ shoulders. He got cold.

“Don’t blame me for what?” His eyes watch the first pink sunlight filter inside.

“For wanting to die,” Harry says. “I don’t blame you.”

“Thank you,” Louis swallows.

Their hands find each other. For a moment, Harry thinks he’s going to bolt for the door, shut Louis inside and never come back. But he presses Louis’ knuckles against his mouth and reconsiders.

They take turns sharing random facts they’ve picked up along the way, an attempt to lull themselves into exhaustion. Harry’s in the middle of describing colors of the sky and what they mean when he feels Louis fall asleep against his chest.

Close to love as he’s ever been, Harry follows him into his dreams soon after.

*  
*  
*

_Harry wakes in the gas station. There’a a fist pounding on the door. He blinks slowly, everything fucked up and foggy, needle still in his arm. The door opens, and there’s arms everywhere, voices too demanding for it to have worked and for Harry to be six feet under where he belongs._

_He never thought he could taste that precipice, the metallic sensation of the body shutting down. But that’s all he remembers of those few hours he spent in the hospital, naloxone administered, family-less, friend-less junkie left in a room with two other close calls._

_That’s all he remembers, that taste. Wanting to die so bad he could have burned down the whole building._

*  
*

In the morning, Harry finds the diet pills, the pink laxatives, the hydroxycut powder drinks and scales hidden in cabinets, under couches, rugs. He leaves them all where he found them. The floorboards don’t make a sound. Louis’ body barely moves when he breathes.

None of his business. Not his body.

*  
*

He slips out of the front door, soft jacket loose over his frame. The walk to the nearest convenience store is five minutes from Louis’ house. He’s got enough money for a pack of cigarettes and some other things, so he wastes no time in getting there, hoping Louis hasn’t woke yet to an empty bed.

_Focus, fire a gun._

The cashier never looks up from her hands. Slipping money out of his wallet, Harry pays for his things, touches the counter to make sure he isn’t dreaming.

*  
*

When Louis wakes, Harry is there to see it.

Throughout the morning Harry paced around the room, quietly, sometimes hovering near Louis to check if he was still breathing. There’s something frightening about the way his skin settles over his bones, in the minted daytime, where Harry can see it as it is. It’s frightening, because it reminds him of Niall when he laid polished in the casket, face sunken-in and pulled tight.

But still—Louis shifts in his sleep, exhales bits of his dreams in brief murmurings.

His eyelids open slowly, childlike. Harry watches him process the pack of cigarettes, the white lighter, both placed by his fingers, which shake even in sleep. Louis sits up, suddenly, sensing the frigid loneliness of the empty bed.

He looks around the room, frowning. Then he notices Harry in the doorway.

Barely moving, Louis strips the plastic away from the carton. His fingers slide the cigarette out, small sounds of cardboard being rubbed together, and his collarbones drawn up into a cupid’s bow. Harry can see all the marks he made with his mouth. They’ve bloomed. The room is less cold than it was even an hour ago.

Louis lights the cigarette. Harry bites into his nectarine, smiling.

“Good morning,” he says.

“Good morning,” Louis grins. “Are you falling in love with me?”

Harry licks juice off of his bottom lip, allows himself to take in the sight of Louis in bed, sheets pooled around his waist, eyes startling. Full of stars, like always.

“Yes,” he murmurs. “I’m falling in love with you.”

“Good.” Louis exhales a stream of smoke. “I’m falling in love with you, too.”

*  
*

The day stays long like that—they run a fever and break it. They invent the cure for cancer and figure out how god tastes. Harry thinks more than once that he’s glad he didn’t die in a Quik Mart bathroom, that maybe Louis was waiting to meet him, and someone on the other side said _not yet_.

They both work the later shifts that night. When it’s time to go, Harry dresses Louis first, pulling jumpers out from the closet, watching his weight restore in fabric. Louis zips his jacket, pecks him on the lips. It’s fun, to act like they’re in love, never having known what it feels like in the first place.

“You’ll text me when you’re done?”

“I can just come over,” Louis says. “Help you, if you need it.”

“You’d just distract me,” Harry throws an arm over his shoulder, pulling him in close. They rough-house, Harry chasing him down the block, gathering him in his arms at the corner.

“I have to go the other way,” Louis exhales, breathless.

“Okay.”

“I’m going to be late,” Louis sighs. His lips try to contain a fervent smile, but Harry sees through it, his thumb rubbing at a rouged spot on his neck. Until now it never occurred to him there were other people on the street.

“You’ll be alright,” Harry assures. He kisses him plain on the mouth and tastes the menthol cigarettes. “Okay,” he loosens his grip, vision spotty. “I’ll see you later.”

“Okay,” Louis agrees. His fingers itch above his eyebrow before he leans forward and presses his lips to the small dip along at the bottom of Harry’s neck, in between the slope of his collarbones. “Bye for now.”

“Bye for now.”

They wave small goodbyes, teeth gleaming even despite the overcast sky. It’s going to rain tonight. Harry felt it from the moment he woke up.

He watches Louis walk down the street, makes himself notice the effort it must take for him to hold himself together. Day-by-day, dwindling into nothing, anticipating a stopped heart.

Harry’s chest aches.

Black trash bags are lined up along the street, the collector not due till tomorrow morning. It’s almost four, but Harry doesn’t force himself to get there before then. He thinks about that morning Louis got off the bus, sunshine stuck to him in that strange, holy way. They almost missed each other.

And then they didn’t. Harry didn’t die on a green-tiled floor, and Louis didn’t disappear, much as he might’ve wanted to.

They don’t get to keep love for long. It doesn’t work that way, but—Harry smiles, remembering the collapse—at least they found what they were looking for.

*  
*

_But oh you caught me sleeping in the power sockets_

_You caught me mildew in the tiles of the bathroom_

_And oh you shot a glance like I was doing okay_

_Oh I am never on my way_

* * *

 


End file.
